Sunday, October 26, 2014

In a recent post, I discussed some
documentation I recently acquired from the Magnavox v Bally case that include
some interesting revelations about Chicago Coin’s early video games (well, it
was interesting to me at least, even if it wasn’t to anyone else). Today I
discuss another document from that case that included some interesting
information about the first video game efforts from another well-known company
– Williams Electronics (creators of
Defender, Joust, Robotron etc.) Seeburg
and Magnavox The testimony comes from the deposition of Bob Fritsche, who
served as Product Manager of the Odyssey and
black and white television for Magnavox from around January 1973 to about
September, 1975 (he had previously been product planner for the Odyssey). During the deposition, which was taken December 28, 1976,
Fritsche reveals that Magnavox was approached by Seeburg around January, 1973
about the possibility of having Magnavox (or, more likely, Sanders Associates)
build a coin-operated Pong game for them. How is this relevant to Williams? At
the time, Williams was owned by Seeburg, which had purchased it in 1964.
Seeburg was, of course, primarily known for jukeboxes but they did make other
kinds of machines (like the 1947 classic Shoot
the Bear, coffee machines etc.) Besides Williams, other Seeburg divisions
in 1973 were Choice Vend (soda machines), Qualitone (hearing aids), and King
Musical Instruments. But back to video games. I will post the full text of the
relevant portion of the deposition at the end, but for now, here’s a summary:

·In January or February,
1973 Fritsche was approached by Bill Surette, his boss, who had in turn been
approached by Seeburg (or an agent representing Seeburg). Surette wanted
Fritsche to arrange a meeting in Ft. Wayne (Magnavox HQ) with someonefrom Seeburg to review a Pong game that
Seeburg had shipped to Magnavox (I believe this was an Atari Pong unit - if it was January or February, 1973, it would almost have to have been)

·On March 13, 1973
Fritsche wrote a letter to Magnavox’s engineering, design, and financial people
asking for help in an analysis of Magnavox producing a coin-operated video game
for Seeburg.

·The meeting (which I
think occurred earlier) was held in the Odyssey engineering lab. Fritsche and
Dick Waring (head of the Odyssey engineering group) attended along with one
person from Seeburg.

·During the meeting, the
Seeburg rep pointed out that the Pong game, which made by “an outfit…out in
California” was totally “inadequate for the market”, noting how easily it could
be jimmied, how it posed safety hazards, it had no kickplate on the front, it
had a pie tin for a coin box etc.

·Seeburg was aware of
the Odyssey patents and that Magnavox was a quality manufacturer and wanted
them to make a quality version of Pong.

·Seeburg also asked
Magnavox to look at the other Odyssey games and see if any could be adapted for
coin-op play.

·For the Pong game, in
terms of gameplay, Seeburg essentially wanted an exact clone of Pong (they
liked the fact that it was easy to understand and required few instructions).

·After the meeting,
Fritsche gathered information and had another meeting (prior to March 13) in
Fort Wayne with three people from Seeburg and Williams Electronics.

·During this meeting,
the Williams people explained that they felt the video game market had a lot of
potential and they were willing to back up their commitment to Magnavox with an
order of around 1,000 or 2,000 units.

·Fritsche replied that
they would need a minimum commitment of 5,000 units and after that, Magnavox
had no further contact with Seeburg or Williams.

So it appears that nothing ever came of
the negotiations between Seeburg/Williams and Magnavox. Nonetheless, around
May, Williams did produce its first video game – a Pong clone called Paddle Ball.

The
Origins of Paddle Ball

So if it didn’t come from Magnavox,
where DID Paddle Ball come from? Did Seeburg go to someone else? Did Williams
“design” it themselves? Was it a mere knockoff of Pong? I don’t really know,
but there is one tantalizing possibility. Below is the first page of the
instruction sheet for Paddle Ball (taken from this
discussion on MameWorld).

Notice the logo at the bottom of the
page – Magnetic Corporation of America. Who are they and could they have designed
Paddle Ball? As it turns out, the company did in act produce at least one video
game of its own. Here is an ad from the June, 1975 issue of Play Meter.

Note well that address: 179 Bear Hill
Road, Waltham, MA.

Over the years, a few boards have turned
up for this game, but little other info is known.

The only other reference I found to the
company in trade publications is this mention from the want ads section of the
June 20, 1977 issue of Play Meter.

So it looks like MCOA MAY have made at
least one non-Pong game, though this isn’t certain given that the source is a
want ad (for a used game?) and may have gotten their info wrong. Note that the 215 area code is in the
Philadelphia area.

One of the few other video-game related
references to MCOA is this list
of Kurz-Kasch Test Fixture boards, which lists a game called Electromotion
by “Magnetic Corp”. The only Electromotion I know of it’s the one made by the
company the same name, which was located in the Philadelphia area.

We do, however, have a bit more info on
Magnetic Corporation of America. Again, here is a summary:

·The
company appears to have been started by MIT student
Theo de Winter after he failed the MIT PhD qualifying exam. “At one point
[MCOA] had 200 employees, developing superconductors for the then-new MRI
industry.” De Winter later sold the company to Johnson & Johnson.

·If
you do a Google search for “179 Bear Hill Road” and Magnetic, you will find several
reference to the company relating to its work on superconducting magnets used
in MRIs, research for maglev trains, work they did for Los Alamos National Lab, contracts they had with the
Air Force and Department of Energy and more.

·A
company named “Magnetic Corporation of America” existed at least as
early as 1949 , though I don’t know if it was the same company.

·In
1956, there was a company called Magnetic Corporation of America, which Billboard
described as “an operating company whose holdings range from the electronics
field to real estate”

·If
you do a Google book search, you will find several more references to Magnetic Corporation
of America in Waltham, MA

I haven’t really dug into the references yet and don't know if I will, but I would
like to find out more about how MCOA got involved with video games and if they
were involved with designing Paddle Ball (or at least the board). Perhaps someone else can shed more
light on the subject?

DEPOSTION OF BILL FRITSCHE

Q Did Magnavox ever consider
manufacturing a coin-operated TV game?

A Yes, they did?

Q And how did that come about, or how
did that condition arise?

A Well, the first I was aware of it was
through Bill Surette, who I was working for, and this was in January of 1973. I
reported to him, and his offices were in New York. He explained to me that he
had been approached -- I'm not certain by whom -- whether it was through a
broker or directly by Seeburg -- but he had had a contact with them, and by the
time he contacted Bill Surette contacted me, he had already been in contact
with Seeburg, and was arranging a meeting, through me, at Fort Wayne, at our
corporate headquarters, to review a product which Seeburg was mailing to us,
and that's what this product that's sitting here in the courtroom, the Pong.
The unit was identical to that.

Q That’s Plaintiff’s Exhibit 10?

A Right. That was in our engineering lab
and was the product that we used to form our initial discussions with Seeburg,
and this was -- I could be wrong on the month -- but it was January or
February, 1973.

Q Mr. Fritsche, please refer to
Plaintiff’s Exhibits 97-L and 97-M , and see if that refreshes your
recollection as to the date or the approximate date.

A Well, as I say, the first document,
97-L, after reading it, I am familiar with the circumstances. I was not
familiar with this letter, which my observation is it comes from a finder who
has some correspondence with Magnavox, and I suspect this is how Bill Surette
became aware of the potential arrangement that could be made .the potential
arrangement that could be made

Q Now, you indicated that Seeburg
shipped a Pong game to Magnavox in Fort Wayne?

A Yes

Q Now, when did that occur in the total
relationship with between Magnavox and Seeburg? A It had to -- we received that
game in January or February, 1973, because I wrote a letter on March 13, 1973
to our engineering, our design, and our financial people in Magnavox, asking
them to assist me in an analysis of Magnavox producing a coin-operated video
game for Seeburg, and that's the substance of the letter which is Exhibit 97-M.

Q And I think you said that after
Magnavox received the pong game from Seeburg, representatives of Seeburg came
to Fort Wayne for a meeting that you attended?

A Yes, yes. They used this game as their
talking piece, to explain, first of all, who Seeburg was, how they were
positioned in their industry, and they felt -- they characterized themselves

THE COURT: Let's have a few more details on
this conversation, who was there, and who was doing the talking.

BY MR. ANDERSON: Q All right. Was this
the first meeting when these people came to Magnavox that you –

A It was the first meeting that I was
aware of. There could possibly have been another meeting with Bill Surette in
New York that I would not be aware of, and I don't recall one happening. I believe
this meeting that I had was the first one, and I was there, Dick Waring, who
was the head of the engineering group for Odyssey was there, and I do not
recall the gentleman's name from Seeburg, I just I don't recall what his name
was

Q Was there only one gentleman from
Seeburg

A Yes

Q Or more than one?

A Just one.

Q And at the time of that meeting in
Fort Wayne, attended by the gentleman from Seeburg, was the ponggame in Fort Wayne?

A Yes, it was, it was in the engineering
lab, the meeting was held in the engineering lab for Odyssey, and, as I say, it
was used as the talking piece by the Seeburg representative.

Q All right, and then, if you can,
relate, in as much detail as you presently can, the entire events of that
meeting, in other words, how it started, and who said what to whom, and how it
ended?

A Well, primarily, it was a Seeburg
representative saying to us -- he was positioning himself, and positioning
Seeburg, as to who they were, where they stood in their business, and also· the
fact that the reason they were coming to Magnavox was that this game was by an
outfit -- or a company out in California, had just entered the marketplace, it
was a very, very poor, crude example of a product that would be insufficient in
the coin-operated market, and it was totally inadequate for the market, and he
commenced to explain why, how the construction is not adequate, etc., etc. We
went through all the details how it could be jimmied, the back could be taken
off, the safety hazards, and all the parameters that that product -- it looked
pretty to us, but to him, he tore it to ribbons. He also indicated at the time
that the reason he was at Magnavox was, one, Seeburg was aware of some patents
that surrounded Odyssey, and that Magnavox was the exclusive licensee for them.
Secondly, he told me that he knows Magnavox and Seeburg's position was -- his
position was that Magnavox is a quality manufacturer of TV, stereos, etc., that
they have been known in the industry to product quality, furniture pieces out of
wood. Therefore, he concludedthat if we can make
quality products, and we are a quality house, that we can make a quality
cabinet for a video gamebecause we also make the video games.
Therefore, he was asking for us to consider how we could make a video game like
this one for Seeburg. He expressed concern, as I had concern all along,
eventually, as the coin-operated games grew, in the direction that they were
going. It's a virgin territory, it's a virgin product, and it needed to have a
little protection around it. A lot of people, in trying to gain as much money
today out of it, in my opinion, can jeopardize the future of the product, and
one of the things Magnavox was trying to do was trying to insure and instill
some discipline in product development that would help insure the natural
future growth of video gaming.

Q All right, now, you have indicated
that he explained that they wanted a game like pong, but that the particular
physical construction had drawbacks and insufficiencies, is that correct?

A Yes.

MR. GOLDENBERG: Excuse me.

THE COURT: Mr. Goldenberg?

MR. GOLDENBERG: I object to that. I
don't believe that the witness testified as Mr. Anderson characterized, that
they wanted a game like pong. If he said that, I missed it, and I withdraw the
objection, but

THE COURT: Well, I will sustain the
objection, and perhaps you can rephrase your question.

M

R. ANDERSON: Certainly.

BY MR. ANDERSON: Q Mr. Fritsche, you
have indicated Seeburg sent this pong game, Plaintiffs' Exhibit 10, or a game just
like that, down to Magnavox, is that correct?

A That's right.

Q And you explained that this gentleman
from Seeburg why he was pointing out the deficiencies to you?

A Yes.

Q Will you explain that?

A He sent the game down because he
wanted us to see precisely what was on the market. Visually, he wanted what's
right there.

Q When you say "visually" –

A I mean visually in every respect, the
wood cabinet and the electronics, the way it worked, the game it played However,
he qualified all of those by saying that cabinet in no way meets the quality
standards of Seeburg. It must have a kickplate on the front. This does not.
Visually, it looks like a game that they would-they could put out. Maybe I am
characterizing their quality image for them, but all he was saying is I want a
product that's like that, but there are certain things you have to do. You have
to put quarter rounds on the back so the man who hauls
this to the bowling alley or bar or airport can slide it in and out of his
station wagon, because that's how he hauls it to that location

Q Now, one of the things you said he
said he wanted was a game that had the same play. Now, did you discuss exactly
what that meant, and, if so, what was that?

A Yes, very definitely. It's the tennis
game, the two players with the ball.

Q And after he had explained that much,
then what happened next during that meeting?

A He discussed the nitty grittys of the
product and the kinds of changes he felt were necessary to be incorporated that
we would have to consider in our proposal back to them in terms of the quality
of the product, the quality and the appearance of the final cabinet and of tre
electronics of the game. He also suggested at that time that we ought to be
looking at games -- some of the other Odyssey games that already existed in our
Model lTL 200, could they, indeed, be adapted for coin-operated play, and he
set out some parameters that they had to play from start to conclusion in one
and a half to two minutes maximum, because the whole concept of that product is
a quarter as quickly as you can get a quarter~,so,
therefore,
the games cannot be protracted as the Odyssey games were that we were selling
as a home game. Two different concepts totally.

THE COURT: Did he have any adverse
criticism of the electronics of the Pong machine as opposed to the cosmetic
features of it?

THE WITNESS: Electronics, yes. When he
took the back off, a lot of exposed -- in this product, there were a lot of
exposed electronics that he felt access from the outside was too easy, somebody
could get back inside it, could get hurt on it. It was not constructed well
inside to catch the money. They had a little pie tin that you can buy in a 5
and 10 store, instead of a coin box that Seeburg and others are used to installing
on their products

THE COURT: What about the circuitry?

THE WITNESS: The circuitry -- I don’t
believe, my recollection says, that they knew that much about it. It looked
huge to them. The circuitry had some parts missing, and this, that and the
other. I don't recall, Judge, that he had really any -- could get very specific
about the electronics, because I don't think he was electronically qualified. I
think he left that to Magnavox, because -- just his own admission that,
"You guys originated it, you guys are electronics engineers, this is
TV-oriented, video-oriented, you know, you will ~''have
to show me what it can or can' t do."

BY
MR. ANDERSON: Q Insofar as the electronics and how they just work to play the
game, did he discuss that aspect of the electronics as it related to playing
the game?

A
Yes, he wanted the same game that he saw played here, and that's a tennis game.
One knob. It has to be very, very brief, very quick. Instructions have to be
very, very quick for the game. 70 per cent of it has to be observed as you drop
the quarter in as to what it is you have to do, so that you don't have to sit
there and, while the game is running, start thinking about how do I play this
game now, and when I turn this knob, it does this, that or the other. He felt
versus our home game, where we have several controls to manipulate, each
player, he was satisfied with one control for the player, which was just a
vertical movement, couldn't complicate the game, because it had to be completed
within two minutes of play.

Q
All right, and then what happened? Was there any more conversation that you can
now recall at that meeting, and how did it end?

A
Well, it ended that we would examine all of the specifications that he left
with us, and all those
were verbal, examine all the specifications. We would examine internally our
capability to do it, which I felt certain we could, and we would come back to
him with a proposal. The Exhibit 97-M, as I indicated previously, was my letter
to the head of the video engineering department at Magnavox. It was to Whitey
Welbaum, who is the head of the industrial design
department, and Homer Haag; who was in charge of the financial costing for all
products, and I was asking them, through the course of this letter, I was
laying out the parameters that we had received during our discussions with
Seeburg, how we could put the product together I needed to determine a cost or
course, prior to him coming in, just examining the
Pong, we tried to duplicate that in our own minds. If I put in the same kind of
TV that is there out of Magnavox' stock, what would it cost me? If we made a
cabinet such as that, and they were quick and dirty costs, and we wanted to
clean those up. We wanted to get more specific, more detailed, because in a
company such as Magnavox, the size they were, $300 million sales, you have to
prove your point before the company is going to invest any risk capital. You
have to prove that you can return some money, and this letter was to try to
document our capability to return a profit to the company.

Q Then what happened after the meeting?
Were there any further meetings that you know of between Seeburg and Magnavox?

A Yes. I had a meeting following that in
New York with Bill Surette in the offices of Seeburg, where we again discussed
this potential program in generalities. It was at that meeting that it was
suggested that we meet with the operation type people of Seeburg, who were in a
subsidiary company of theirs, and I don't know quite the organizational
structure they had, but it is Williams Electric, I believe, in Chicago. Three
of their people came to Fort Wayne following our New York meeting, and we sat a~ a
table in our demonstration room. It was the three people from Seeburg-Williams
Electric, myself and our engineer with our own verbal results of this proposal,
which is embodied in this letter of March 13th, discussing the kinds of games
that they felt they had to have, and it was at that time I was trying to
determine, "Now that we know how many we can produce and
what it is going to cost us, what is Williams' or Seeburg's willingness to
commit to the product?" That is when it was explained to me that in the
video game market, for any new game that comes on the market, there is a market
potential of about 30,000 units. The first company to introduce a specific type
of game can generally garner, oh, 8,000 to 12,000 of that total 30,000
capability. The rest, because of the typical structure of that coin-operated
business, it is such that there are a lot of copiers, and the copiers will be
out there just as quickly with their new games. Most of that was talked about
in the frame of reference of pinball games, where they are basically all the
same. The game format changes a little bit, but it is still basically a pinball
game The video games represented an area that Williams Electric people had
indicated they thought had a significant amount of potential for the future,
but that it had to be structured properly, and I wholeheartedly agreed with
that, in terms of the kinds of games that would be played on it, the way in
which they were produced, and the way in which they could be sold to their
distribution to get them marketed out into the various locations where they are
used. At that time was when they indicated to me their willingness to back up
commitment to Magnavox with like 1,000 to 2,000 units, which just is not
satisfactory at all. It is just simply not satisfactory for us to take some of
our facilities at Magnavox, redirect them from mainline products to a secondary
product venture -- at that time -- for which we didn’t feel Magnavox, nor
Seeburg, nor any of the other people who were starting to enter the market at
that time, were giving the proper front end marketing planning and strategy to
developing the products for the marketplace

T

HE COURT: Did you say one thousand or
two thousand?

THE WITNESS: One thousand to two
thousand is about all we got in the way of a commitment.

BY MR. ANDERSON: Q Did Magnavox at that
meeting or at any other time indicate to Seeburg what Magnavox considered to be
a minimum quantity to justify going into this?

A Yes. I did at that meeting. And I said
5,000 units were a minimum. I think I was probably skating a little bit, also,
in that I think my superiors probably would have liked 8,000 units.

Q What happened at that meeting after
that? Is there anything else that you can recall?

A I don't recall the specifics, but
after that I had no more further contact with Seeburg, nor with Williams, and
subsequently negotiations just dissolved. No more contacts were had between the
two companies to my knowledge.

Q Do you know whether Seeburg after that
did come out with a video or TV game? A Yes. They did.

Q Do you know whether it was the tennis
game or some other game they came out with?

A I believe it was the tennis
game. It wasn't quite like this (indicating), because I think it was a
four-player unit, which is simply two players on either side. It is four of
those controls instead of two.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

So far, we’ve been looking at some
video game fiction, but these were relatively rare. Much more common were
non-fiction books – in particular strategy guides. THESE were the ones that
made the bestseller lists and the ones most people probably think of when they
think of video game books of the 1980s. About two dozen of these were published
for arcade games (and that’s not counting the various home game strategy
guides).

How to Play
Space Invaders
Taito
1980

As far as I know, this was the
first arcade video strategy to be published. Sadly, I do not have a copy as it
is extremely rare. It was a 61-page guide written by an anonymous “Japanese
Space Invaders champion” and published by Taito. It was originally published in
Japan, where it sold quite well, then published in the U.S. Here are some
photos from http://www.steverd.com/whatbook/whatbook.htm

How to Win at
Video GamesRay Giguette1981Martin Press (Torrance, CA)

This is the first mass-market
strategy guide I’ve been able to find. Once again, however, I do not have a
copy, nor do I have much information on it. It covered juste ten games and checked
in at a scant 46 pages. Nonetheless, it sold 10,000 copies, which may tell you
how popular video games were and how much people were starved for strategy
guides. The book ended with an advertising promising a second volume, but it
was apparently never published.

How to Master the Video GamesTom HirschfeldBantam BooksDecember, 1981

Now THIS one I had and loved (and yes, that's Tom on the cover). Giguette’s guide may have been the
first coin-op strategy guide to hit the bookstores, but it was hardly a major hit.
In December, 1981 Bantam Books released How
to Master the Video Games by Tom Hirschfeld, which became the first video
game bestseller. The book was the brainchild of visionary publisher Walter
Zacharius, a legend in the independent publishing world.

Born in Brooklyn in
1923, Zacharius took part in D-Day and the liberation of Paris at age 19. After
returning to the U.S., he attended New York University on the G.I. Bill before
landing a job with McFadden Publications where he worked on romance magazines
like True Story and True Confessions. Aimed at working class
women, these magazines often featured lurid tales of wayward women who fell
into sin, learned hard-bitten lessons, and emerged triumphant. This experience
would serve Zacharius well throughout the remainder or his career. After
leaving McFadden, Zacharius went to work for Ace Books, a publisher of
paperback genre fiction, including science fiction, fantasy, westerns, and
mysteries. At Ace, Zacharius created the two-in-one Ace Double Novel line,
which became the company’s mainstay.

In 1961, Zacharius cofounded Lancer Books,
most famous for its fantasy novels like Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian series, science fiction, and erotic spy novels
like The Man From O.R.G.Y. In 1965,
in a typically shrewd move, Zacharius published a racy sex satire called Candy by Terry Southern and Mason
Hoffenberg. The novel had been a hit in Paris, but the publisher had not filed
a copyright in the U.S. Dell had already published a version of the book but
Zacharius was unfazed. Pricing his version at 20 cents below Dell’s, he
splashed the phrase “banned in Paris” across its cover and produced a
bestseller. In 1973, Lancer Books went bankrupt. The following year Zacharius,
along with Roberta Grossman, formed Kensington Books, which went on to become
the nation’s largest independent publisher of mass market and trade paperbacks.
Kensington’s books were never going to make the New York Times Review of Books, which was fine with Zacharius. In a
1982 interview, he opined “We’re not impressed with what’s selling on Fifth Avenue
or Rodeo Drive, our readers patronize suburban shopping malls”.Kensington’s primary line was romance novels,
published through its Zebra Books imprint, often with flashy (some would say
trashy) foil covers. Zacharius built his empire thorough innovative marketing
and knowing his audience. He sought out overlooked writers and unpublished
authors willing to work for a pittance. Growing the romance genre beyond it
formulaic roots, he expanded in to include supernatural and western-themed
romances and romances aimed at Hispanic, black, and gay readers. In later
years, he struck distribution deals with Wal-Mart, peddled his books on QVC,
and pioneered the use of holograms on book covers.

In the summer of 1981, Zacharius
was, as always, looking for the next big thing. At the time, the most popular
toy in the country was Rubik’s Cube.
Invented in 1974 by Hungarian architect Erno Rubik, the toy was licensed to
Ideal, who introduced to the American public in 1980. It was a national
sensation, accounting for a quarter of Ideal’s revenues in 1981, selling 30
million copies by mid-1982, and become an icon of 1980s kitsch. Almost as
popular as the cube itself were strategy guides that taught players how to
solve the dastardly puzzle. Among the titles that hit the bestseller list were Solving the Cube by Cyril Ostrop, You Can Do the Cube, and Mastering Rubik’s Cube by Don Taylor.
Written by a 13-year old English schoolboy, You
Can Do the Cube sold 1.5 million copies worldwide. Mastering Rubik’s Cube did even better – its 1.8 million copies in
print in 1981 made it the #1 trade paperback of the year. The biggest seller of
them all was The Simple Solution to
Rubik’s Cube, the #1 mass market paperback of the year (winning out over 101 Uses For a Dead Cat and a seemingly
endless series of Garfield books –
prompting many worried a intellectual to decry the trashing of literary culture).
The book was written by James Nourse, a research chemist at Stanford, along
with brothers Paul and Mark Weinberg. Originally sold as a typewritten set of
instructions, the book was eventually published by Bantam and sold a million
copies in its first month and over 7 million overall, making it the year’s
bestselling title by far and one of Bantam’s biggest hits ever (a follow-up by
Nourse called The Simple Solution to
Cubic Puzzles sold another million copies). Zacharius noticed the plethora
of Rubik’s Cube titles clogging the
bestseller list, as well as the fact that such works were easy to publish (The Simple Solution… clocked in at just
64 pages and Mastering… at a skimpy
32 pages). It was too late to jump on the Rubik’s
Cube bandwagon, but another craze was sweeping the nation – video games.
Wondering if they could cash in on the phenomenon, Zacharius and Grossman
turned to the youngest person in their offices – an 18-year old Harvard student
named Tom Hirschfeld.

A Classics major, Hirschfeld had taken a year off after
two years of college to work as an editorial assistant at Kensington. When
Zacharius and Grossman asked Tom if he knew anything about video games, he said
he had (though he was really more of a pinball player). When they asked if
someone could write a strategy book about the games, Tom volunteered his services.
Armed with a bag of quarters, Hirschfeld hit the New York City arcades and
began to hone his skills. For assistance, manufacturers referred him to various
expert players, including Leo Daniels, Asteroids
ace Greg Davies, and national Space
Invaders champion Bill Heinemann. The book, which took Hirschfeld about
four months to complete, profiled the “30 most popular arcade games” (though
this number included a few rarities like Atari’s Sky Raider and Bally/Midway’s Space
Odyssey). Most games were covered in a 3-5 page section that included a
hand-drawn screenshot, a summary of basic gameplay, a number of “observations”
about the game, and a handful of strategies.

The book’s oddest chapter featured
a series of somewhat bizarre “Off-Machine Exercises” a player could use to
enhance their skills (example: “…wrap the fingers of your right hand tightly
around a pen. Then extend the forefinger and rotate it clockwise around a doorknob”).

The strategies were fairly basic but at a time when video game strategy guides
were unheard of, they were a godsend and many players would head to arcades
with a well-worn copy of the book tucked into their back pocket. Anticipating
the popularity of the book, Kensington realized that they wouldn’t be able to
handle publishing it on their own. Instead, they turned to Bantam, publishers
of The Simple Solution to Rubik’s Cube.
Bantam agreed to publish the book and when they saw the final result, they
asked Hirschfeld to create a second volume on home video games even before the
first book went to press. Released in December, 1981, How to Master the Video Games was a hit. While it didn’t match the
sales of Bantam’s Rubik’s Cube volume,
over a million copies were printed. The book earned the teenaged Hirschfeld a
measure of fame, with Bantam sending him on a publicity tour that included
radio interviews, book signings, and an appearance on CBS Morning News (where he taught Diane Sawyer how to play Space Invaders). After penning his two
video game tomes, Hirschfeld returned to Harvard to complete his degree then
went to Oxford on a Marshall Scholarship where he earned a graduate degree in
Economics and Politics. He then returned to the states where he spent 8 years
at Salomon Brothers, worked as a financial advisor and venture capitalist, and
served as an assistant to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. In 1999, along with his wife,
he wrote Business Dad: How Good
Businessmen Can Make Great Fathers (and Vice Versa).

Monday, October 13, 2014

I've posted a few times about various oddball Atari coin-op products I've come across and thought I'd do a post with some updated information about some of them. Atari Theatre Kiosk

One of the things I posted about was the Atari Theatre Kiosk. For some reason, even though I only mentioned it briefly, the post has gotten an inordinate amount of attention (maybe it's a San Francisco thing - I didn't think it was that exciting).

Anyway, I actually found three different articles on it that I didn't bother sharing before.

The first is this one, from the April, 1976 Play Meter, which also includes a picture of one of the units at the Velizy shopping mall in Paris.
For those who don't want to read the whole thing (short as it is), here are some interesting points:

* The unit could actually be configured to hold any number of games, though six was most popular.
* According to Jean Francois Gaillard (Atari's overseas manager), the idea was developed in Atari Europe's French factory, who sent a sample to the US
* A unit was also installed at Orly Airport
* The unit was shown at the Ima show in West Germany in March, 1976
* The unit pictured includes Steeplechase, which seems odd since it was a six-player game - though maybe it was a 3-player version (there are six buttons, however, and I thought it was a one-button-per-player game).

Here's the second article, from Vending Times, February, 1977. I posted the photo last time, but now I have a better version. I don't think I posted the article last time.
Interesting tidbit:

* The unit also included advertising panels and a 35mm slide projection system with info on the Bay Area, sporting events etc.

The last article is from the May 14, 1977 issue of Cash Box (no picture this time).
Tidbits for the lazy:

* The Powell Street was installed in December, 1976 and was clearing about $800 a month for BART
* The games were: Pong Doubles, Space Race, Trak 10, Jet Fighter, LeMans, and Tank.

Atari's Cocktail Pong gameI have posted a couple of times about what the first cocktail video game was. One possibility (though it likely wasn't the first) was a cocktail Pong game that Atari did for National Entertainment around late 1973. I have since discovered that a flyer was actually produced for this game:

Note the Atari logos on the controllers. I am not sure, however, if Atari designed the board for this one, since National Entertainment eventually abandoned the Atari version and went with another one from Meadows (the one in the flyer may use a Meadows board and Atari controllers).Magic TrolleyAnother interesting Atari product was its little-known arcade-in-a-trailer with 26 games that could be hauled around to carnivals etc. Less known is that another company later tried the same thing. At the 1977 AMOA show Michigan's Elcon Industries tried the same idea with its Magic Trolley.

I actually talked to Andre Dubel (Elcon founder) who told me that he thinks they only sold one of these.

Thursday, October 9, 2014

In today's post, I conclude my look at golden age video game fiction with a pair off titles aimed at slightly older readers.First up is Video War by Stephen Manes

Video War was published in 1983 by Avon Books (note that Amazon lists the publication date as 2012, but this refers to the digital edition released that year). Since some of you might actually want to read these books, I will only describe them briefly in order to avoid spoiling the ending. Video War tells the story of a disaffected teen named
Zoz who spends him time at Arnie's arcade playing a game called Penetron while designing video games in
his head (after his alcoholic mom drags him out of an arcade in front of his
friends, for example, he creates the game Big
Mama, in which you try to shake a 300-pound mother off your back). When his
mom's boyfriend, a cretinous city council member, tries to shut down Arnie's
and ban video games in Bunker Hill Bluffs, Zoz and his friends form VIDEO
(Valley Individuals Defending Entertainment Options) and hold a play-in to
raise money for charity and hopefully thwart the nefarious city council. Along
the way, Zoz falls in love with a painfully shy hacker named Rowena, whose
parents buy her expensive computer equipment as a substitute for the time they
can't spend with her. According to Amazon's author page, Manes, who has a degree in cinema from USC, "has written more than thirty books and hundreds of articles in a long career of making arcane words accessible to the uninitiated." His first listed book is "Mule in the Mail", published in November, 1978. In the early to mid 1980s, he wrote a number of books, including a riddle book (Socko), a series of BASIC programming books for various home computers co-written with Paul Somerson (Computer Craziness, Computer Monsters etc.), and a pair of children's fiction titles (The Boy Who Turned Into a TV Set and Life is No Fair!). In October, 1982, he published the young adult novel I'll Live, in which "Eighteen-year-old Dylan faces painful changed brought on by his father's terminal illness." Later works include the Obnoxious Jerks, Hooples on the Highway, and Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days (which "won kid-voted awards in five states and is a curriculum staple in American and French schools"). Manes also coauthored a biography of Bill Gates (Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself the Richest Man in America) and wrote a book on the world of ballet (Where Snowflakes Dance). For classic video game fans, the most interesting of his later works is probably That Game From Outer Space, which Amazon describes as follows:"The giant video game that appears one day in Pete's Pizza Palace is the
strangest one Oscar Noodleman has ever seen. It looks more like a rocket ship
than a game. There's not a word of English on it anywhere; everything from the
control panel to the coin slot is labeled in some strange language that seems to
use squiggles instead of letters. And when he and Pete finally figure out how to
get it working, they discover the loudest game they've ever heard. But as
the screen pops out to wrap around Oscar's head and he gets deeper into the
game, he discovers levels and challenges unlike any he's ever seen. He begins to
wonder if this isn't just a game, but a real rocket from outer space. Some
colorful bugs run down the screen and into the coin slot. And that's when things
start getting downright weird . . ."Both That Game From Outer Space and Video War are available as Kindle books.

Illustration from That Game From Outer Space (art by Tony Auth)

Arcade by Robert Maxxe

, This one was published in October 1986 by Paperjacks, which is technically after my cutoff year for the golden age of video games (1985), but it is close enough and was likely inspired by the golden age, so I'll cover it. The publisher's synopsis on Amazon does a pretty good job describing the book's plot:

"Something is capturing the minds of
children in this small town. When her son Nick becomes captivated by
"Spacescape," a game at the new video arcade, and spends all of his
free time playing his way to the game's elite levels, Mrs. Foster suspects that
Nick has become a victim of the game's uncanny, malevolent influence and
imagines that kids are being brainwashed by this electronic video-game. The
heroine here is lovely young widow Carrie Foster, who runs a gourmet food-shop
in a quiet, posh Long Island village--and becomes increasingly fretful about
the new video arcade that recently opened just down the street. True, Nick's
grades in school certainly aren't suffering. In fact, he's becoming
scientifically precocious. But why do the arcade games seem to be so much more
sophisticated than others? And why is there never any sign of the owner or
manager? And why do the kids who play the games seem to be forming into exclusive
cells, with ungifted players permanently barred from the machines? Even
Carrie's new love, computer architect Lon Evans, can't quite figure out the
technology involved. And then one of the barred non-players drowns--a possible
suicide. So Carrie becomes convinced that something is wrong. She and a dubious
Lon start tracking down the people behind the arcade--finding only a single
entrepreneur in an abandoned factory, who offers an almost plausible
explanation. But, with Nick refusing to give up the game, Carrie's surer than
ever that "some unholy, unhuman" force is programming the kids.
Furthermore, when she and Lon kidnap and dissect one of the machines, their
suspicions are confirmed: Lon finds super-sophisticated signs of 'biochips'
& brain chemistry, organic soup--a way of feeding intelligence via the
game's joystick! So who is behind it all?"

This one sounds like an alarmist book inspired by anti-video game hysteria, but it really isn't (at least not entirely). I actually thought this one started out quite well, but kind of lost me once they got to the explanation for all the mysterious events and I found the ending quite disappointing. Still, it's well worth a read for anyone who remembers the good old days.BONUS - Nolan Bushnell's First Press AnnouncementRecently, I came across what I am pretty sure is Nolan Buhnell's first "press announcement". How can I be so sure? Well, take a look:

That's Nolan's birth announcement from the February 14, 1943 issue of the Ogden (Utah) Standard. Note that he was actually born in Ogden, not Clearfield (though his parents lived in Cleafield at the time).OK, so it wasn't exactly a "press release" and it doesn't mention him by name, but I thought it was interesting (maybe I need to get out more).Here's one from he March 7, 1958 issue of the same paper that does mention his name: